It is known how to create customised documents using document templates or master documents. In our system, customised documents are generated using master documents which contain portions of document content, such as text or images, which are selectively incorporated into the resulting customised documents. For example, portions of document content included in the master document may be included in the final customised document only if certain conditions are satisfied. Such portions of document content may be referred to as conditional document content. The master document may also include portions of document content which are included unconditionally in the final customised document.
In one example, a social services document customised to a particular person who is the subject of the document may be generated from a master document. If the subject is pregnant then the final document may need to include a portion of text relating to the pregnancy. In this case the master document contains a specific text portion relating to pregnancy which is only included in the final customised document if it has been determined that the subject is actually pregnant. The final document may also need to include a standard clause which is included regardless of pregnancy but whose wording differs depending on whether the subject is male or female. In this case, the master document contains two text portions corresponding to the alternative clause wordings. One or the other of the two text portions is selectively included in the customised document depending on whether the subject is male or female.
The information required to generate a customised document may be represented by one or more variables. In the examples given above, a first variable ‘Pregnant’ which can take one of the two values ‘True’ or ‘False’ is used to represent whether the subject is pregnant or not. A second variable ‘Gender’ which can take one of the two values ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ is used to represent the gender of the subject. Some variables may also take numerical values, such as a variable ‘Age’, text values, such as a variable ‘Nationality’, or other types of value. In our system, the variables may also take values indicating that the value of a variable is unknown or indefinite.
The variables associated with a master document may be used to form logical statements which may in turn be used to specify the conditions which need to be satisfied for each portion of document content to be included in the customised document. For example, the logical statement Gender IS ‘Female’ may be formed which evaluates to True if the subject is female and evaluates to False if the subject is male. This logical statement represents the condition which must be satisfied (i.e. evaluate to True) for the standard clause relating to female subjects to be included in the customised document. The simplest logical statement is a variable such as ‘Pregnant’, which can take the values True and False, appearing on its own. In this case the evaluation of the logical statement is simply the value of the variable. Such a variable, ‘Variable’, appearing on its own as a logical statement may be considered to be shorthand for Variable IS ‘True’. More complicated logical statements may also be formed by combining simpler statements using the logical operators AND, OR and NOT. For example, the logical statement (Gender IS ‘Female’) AND NOT(Pregnant) may be formed which evaluates to True only if the subject is female and not pregnant. The conditions (in the form of logical statements) which dictate whether particular portions of document content are included in the customised document may be referred to as usage statements.
The way in which portions of document content are incorporated into customised documents may be represented in the form of a mark-up of the master document. For example, a portion of conditional text in the master document may be indicated as such by enclosing the text in square bracket, [ . . . conditional text . . . ]. The usage statement associated with a particular portion of document content is indicated as superscript on the inside of the left-hand bracket associated with the portion of document content, [Usage Statement . . . conditional text . . . ]. The conditional document content is included in the customised document only if the usage statement associated with that conditional document content evaluates to True. For example, the mark-up [Gender IS ‘Male’ Text portion 1 . . . ] indicates that the text ‘Text portion 1 . . . ’ is included in the customised document only if the subject is male. Similarly, the mark-up [Pregnant Text portion 2 . . . ] indicates that the text ‘Text portion 2 . . . ’ is included in the customised document only if the subject is pregnant. In the example given above where alternative clause wordings are used depending on whether the subject is male or female, the master document contains [Gender IS ‘Male’ Clause wording 1 . . . ] [Gender IS ‘Female’ Clause wording 2 . . . ]. The position of the document content in the customised document depends on the position of the document content within the master document.
Variables such as ‘Name’ or ‘Address’ may also appear in the text portions. When a variable appears within a portion of text, the variable may be distinguished from the rest of the text by being shown between curly brackets, {variable}. One example of a conditional text portion illustrating this is [Pregnant The mother is {Name} who lives at {Address} . . . ].
Although the examples given above represents one form of mark-up, other forms of mark-up may also be used. Our U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/434,753, incorporated herein by reference, discloses two different forms of mark-up notation and a system and method for converting a master document written in one mark-up notation to a master document written in a different mark-up notation. More complex mark-up notation may also be used. For example, our International patent applications, publication numbers WO 2005/024653, WO 2005/024654, WO 2005/024656 and WO 2005/024660, incorporated herein by reference, disclose several examples.
In order to generate a fully customised document it is necessary to determine the values of all the relevant variables so that the usage statements can be evaluated which in turn allows a determination to be made as to which of the portions of conditional document content to include in the final customised document. This information may be collected by means of a questionnaire which a user completes to assign values to the variables. In the social services examples given above, a user may be asked a first question enquiring as to the gender of the subject. If relevant, a second question may then be asked enquiring as to whether the subject is pregnant. The questionnaire may be presented to the user in the form of a series of web pages for example in which the user types answers into text boxes or checks tick boxes corresponding to predefined alternative answers.
The questionnaire may be generated automatically by analysing the master document and determining from the mark-up and the variables present which questions to ask. Our International patent applications, publication numbers WO 01/04772 and WO 03/061474, incorporated herein by reference, disclose systems and methods for generating a questionnaire from a master document.
Often, once a customised document has been generated, the customised document needs to be subsequently amended. Typically, a first draft of a customised document is generated using some initial document generation data by a document generation system. For example, in the case that the customised document is a contract, the document generation data may include data specifying the legal jurisdiction governing the contract, such as The United States'. The content and form of the customised document depends on the initial document generation data. For example, a contract governed by the laws of the United States may have a different form and different content to an equivalent contract governed by the laws of other countries. In particular, a United States contract may contain clauses not contained within a contract for other countries, and vice versa.
Sometimes, the first draft of a document may not be satisfactory. For example, in the case of a contract between various parties, one or more of the parties may not be satisfied with one or more of the clauses in the contract. This may be resolved by negotiations between the parties, resulting in amendments being made to the contract. In many cases, the amendments may be extensive, resulting in word changes being made throughout the document. Some clauses may be deleted and others added. The amendment process may also be performed manually. Amending a first draft of a document results in a second draft of the document.
Subsequently, a customised document using modified document generation data may be required. For example, where a contract governed by a particular law, such as the United States, has been generated, an equivalent contract governed under a different law, such as the United Kingdom may be required. In this case, the document generation data could be amended to specify the United Kingdom rather than the United States as the governing law, and the document generation system used to generate a new customised document using the modified document generation data. This document represents a first draft of the customised document generated from the modified document generation data. However, this document would not include the amendments made to the first draft of the document generated using the original document generation data. It would therefore be necessary to amend the first draft of the document generated using the modified document generation data in a similar manner as previously to produce a second draft. However, this process may be difficult and time consuming, particularly where the amendments are extensive and made manually.
We have appreciated that, where a first document generated using a first set of document generation data has been amended, it is useful to have a system which facilitates the generation of a second document generated using a second set of document generation data incorporating the same amendments.